This invention relates to a wearable device for use in facilitating or assisting a user in improving the user's posture and enhancing posture awareness. The device is typically used in exercise or movement routines.
People today suffer from a number of nervous ailments owing to current occupations that involve much sitting and typing and looking at computer screens. Many of these ailments can be traced to poor posture. A number of so-called posture correctors are currently on the market that purport to address the problem. Such devices typically take the form of a chest and back harness that forces, or attempts to force, the user's upper spine into a configuration resulting in a reduction of adverse spinal nerve conditions. These devices do not work. They are more like straightjackets that imprison the user. Rather than gently soothing the user and making her comfortable in the workplace, the harnesses causes discomfort and even exacerbates the user's pain by inducing the user's musculature to seize up.
The problem of poor posture giving rise to chronic pain cannot be addressed by the technique of conventional posture improvement devices.
Dancers and athletes, owing to the extreme physical nature of their occupations and avocations, require control of posture, particularly torso orientation and configuration, in addition to controlling limb movement.
U.S. Pat. No. 9,204,987 discloses in pertinent part an exercise assist device including a harness attachable to a user about the thorax so that the harness extends about the thorax. The harness includes a chest strap that extends like a belt about the chest of the user just below the armpits. Two tensile members, preferably implemented as so-called bungee cords, extend through respective channels provided along a rear surface of a back side portion of the chest strap. One of the two tensile members is attachable at its opposite ends to the hands of the user, for instance, via respective loops, rings or bands. The other tensile member is attachable at its opposite ends to the feet or ankles of the user, again via respective loops, rings or bands. The harness further includes two shoulder straps extending in U-shaped configurations parallel to one another, each shoulder strap being connected at one end to the back portion of the chest strap and at an opposite end to a front portion of segment of the chest strap.
After the issuance of U.S. Pat. No. 9,204,987, it was discovered that the device of that patent could be used in executing an extensive range of exercise movements. The movements included many specifically designed to improve the user's performance in different kinds of dance and sports, particularly if the bungee cords were strengthened (to exhibit a larger spring constant) so as to provide a greater resistance to motion of a user's arms and legs. The promise of the device was substantial. However, in practice there arose an impediment to widespread adoption of the device. The device became uncomfortable when the user would undertake certain kinds of movements and, more importantly, the harness would shift so that execution of the exercises was impeded regardless of whether the front of the harness was above or beneath a female user's breasts. If front strap placement was above, the harness would slip downwards and hit the breast tissue. If front strap placement was below the breasts, the harness would slip downwards and resistance was lost.
As depicted in the patent, the front portion or segment of the chest strap was contemplated to extend over the breasts of a female user. However, some women users find this to be uncomfortable. The shoulder straps extend in parallel on opposite sides of the user's body in vertically oriented U-shaped configurations over the shoulders and tend to fall off. Moreover, tightening the shoulder straps causes the back of the harness to rise and pull the front of the chest strap up against the undersides of the breasts. This use of the device tends to round the user's back and shoulders, which is opposite the desirable postural effect of pulling the chest up and outwards and the shoulders back and down.
Furthermore, if adjustments are made to the lengths and positions of the shoulder straps so that the front portion or segment of the chest strap can lie below the breasts, the bungee cords are not at a height for optimal working, severely limiting the functionality of the device in contemplated dance- and sports-related performance-improvement exercises. These problems are compounded by the fact that breast sizes vary and that larger breasts require an increasingly lower placement of the chest strap when it is positioned below the breasts. This aggravates the problem as to the functionality of the two bungee settings. They are too low and pull the harness down so that it is uncomfortable.